


The Important Thing About Purgatory Is That Everyone's Having Fun

by Ias



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon - Movie, Gen, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Post - Canon, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard enough fixing the world without someone riding shotgun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Important Thing About Purgatory Is That Everyone's Having Fun

You would expect that things might change a bit. Come on, it was the apocalypse for crying out loud. You'd think there'd be like, some sort of shift, some fundamentally different or absent part that you could point to and say, “Yep, those there were the end times.” You'd be wrong. Turns out that, rampaging interdimensional monsters aside, things have a big tendancy to stay the same. Inertia. Most powerful force in the universe, according to facts Newt just made up for the sake of that metaphor. Physics really became his strong suit after he realized how much it pissed Hermann off when he bullshitted about it.

But getting back to the inertia thing. It was hard to imagine that, six months after "six months later" was a pleasant daydream, things wouldn't be a whole lot different than they were before. He was still in the same lab. He got a lot fewer delivers of Kaiju parts these days and a lot more time to sleep, but he still spent his days picking through viscera in search of some kind of usable information. The Kaiju were gone, sure, but who was to say that they wouldn't come back? Portals weren't doors so much as holes punched through paper screens. Wasn't too hard to do it twice.

Maybe it was all for the best. The great thing about standing still was that you didn't have to worry about where you were going. And as soon as Newt hit the accelerator he was liable to go straight through the windshield. Metaphorically speaking.

"Could you not think so loudly?" Well. There was that significant development to his lifestyle. His brain now had a sidecar.

He slid his arms out of the chunk of Kaiju blubber salvaged from Scunner's hide with a wet squelch so he could fix Hermann with a good 'ole glare. "Don't even act like you can hear me. I know that's not how it works, thank God. Can't see how I'd stay awake with your boring-ass thoughts running through my head all the time."

"I might not be able to distinguish the content," Hermann growled back, "but the overtones of self-pity were abundantly clear. Desist."

 _Dick_ , Newt mentally spat in his direction.

The other man glared at him before bending back over his work. There was no witty response to that _overtone._ “Stay in your own head, Newton,” was all Hermann said.

He was right, of course. Not like Newt would tell him that, though these days he wouldn't to. They weren't supposed to be exploring their connection, but Newt couldn't help it sometimes; it was like picking at a scab. He just had to see how far he could take it. Pushing boundries was Newt's specialty, after all. Scientifically. Socially. Ethically. Sometimes the best way to keep on your feet was by shoving all your weight against something else. That something just happened to be Hermann.

With a sigh, Newt stripped off his gloves and tossed them into Hermann's garbage can, hearing the thunk of success and Hermann's resulting grumble without so much as looking. With his years of accumulated muscle memory he could go through his entire day's work blindfolded, probably with about the same amount of progress. With no new specimens he was stuck working with the scraps, the rotting throwaways or pickled oddities that they seized from the black market. He and Hermann had enjoyed their moment in the sun, before being shoved onto the fringes as quickly as they stopped beng relevant, stuck in some kind of netherworld where they had to keep working but had nothing to work towards. People liked it better that way. It was safer, to keep Newt and Hermann's collective (and potentially unstable) brainpower diverted, stalled out, spinning their wheels for the sake of a breeze.

Well. They might try to make him irrelevant, but Newt was a man with a mission. That mission being to pick through every leftover scrap of Kaiju until he came up with something that could stop them in the future. And hopefully figure out what was going on in his head at the same time. Yeah, he had some pretty lofty goals. He'd done it before, right?

Not like there wasn't still time to enjoy the little things. Newt leaned back and focused on blasting Iron Maiden in his head, just to see the line in Hermann's shoulders harden. He wasn't going out of his mind. He was just going into someone else's.

  


  


“God damnit!”

The headset went off his head and hit the wall on the other side of the room. Lucky he built those things for durability. He knew his failures all too well. He liked to think that was one of his redeeming qualities.

As soon as Hermann left for bed he'd started the scans. Hermann didn't like it when Newt did tests on himself these days. There were probably some trust issues there, and understandably so. Not like there were any more Kaiju brains for Newt to drift with these days. They'd all up and rotted away. Which meant Newt had approximately one living specimen who he could subject to testing, and that was himself. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

The scan he'd sent running around in his brain hadn't even done him the courtesy of picking up an anomaly. Or at least an unexpected one. His brain was swiss cheese, after his one-on-one drift with a Kaiju that was a given, but it wasn't the holes Newt was looking for. If he and Hermann were still ghost-drifting months after the event took place, then there had to be something physical to point to. Hermann had also been subjected to every test known to man, and all the scans came back as clean as could have been hoped for. Then again, "known to man" wasn't really a limiting factor for Newt. 

A quiet laugh from behind him made his head snap around. A pair of workers were hovering in the doorway, small, mocking smiles plastered on their smug lips. Something about them put him off immediately.

“Can I help you with something?” He snapped.

“No, we're just looking, thanks,” One of them said. Their eyes travelled over the room, taking in the ancient equipment and notes plastering the walls, the tangible result of Newt's failure lying crumpled in the corner. The other one snorted.

“This isn't a goddamn zoo,” Newt yelled as he lurched to his feet. The after-effects of the scan left his inner-ears messed up, and he had to grab the edge of his desk to stop from falling. The pair scattered anyways, their laughter ringing back down the halls as they went. God, was this fucking high school again?

“I saved the world, you asshats!” Newt shrieked at their backs. It sounded pretty pathetic, even to him. He wasn't sure when he became such a cliché, the mad scientist doing experiments on himself. He might as well start cackling, invest in a couple tesla coils. Embrace the image. 

A flutter of anxiety stirred up in his stomach; the shock waves of his high blood pressure must have reached Hermann. Bitterly, Newt shook his head. He couldn't even lose it without an audience anymore. But that wasn't about to change with him sitting here moping.

He stood up and retrieved the headset. This time. This time, he'd figure it out.

  


  


  


At the end of the day Newt trudged through the metal hallways on the way back to his room. Unsurprisingly, he'd made little progress today. That beat the approximately zero progress he'd made yesterday though, so he was counting it as a victory. Sleep wasn't so much a reward as it was a painful necessity. He walked a lot slower these days, meandered through the corridors without some crisis heating a fire under his ass. The day ended whenever he wanted it to these days, as opposed to whenever his body rejected the cocktail of coffee, cigarettes and energy drinks he lived off of. He still went days without sleep. At this point it was more habit than anything.

The springs and hard edges of his bed jabbed into the familiar crannies of his back as he flopped down on his cot. A significant amount of funding must have gone towards creating a bed which was actually more uncomfortable than the floor. He knew from experience. From the other room he could hear Hermann moving around, the shuffling of his footsteps skimming across the floor. The walls might be thick, but metal echoed.

They'd requested a change in rooms after the drifting incident, but they'd been pushing that paperwork ever since some wise guy thought it was smart to shove them both into neighboring closets. Not like it would make a difference. There wasn't a door that could be closed between them these days.

Almost on cue, a twinge of pain shot through Newt's leg. With a wince, he swung it onto the bed beside him and began digging his fingers into the muscles. Sometimes he felt like if he could just hit the right pressure point he could squeeze the ache out of his body. If that was the case, he should be poking himself in the brain. That was the source of most of his problems these days.

They'd agreed not to tell anyone about it. Not like it was something they wanted to talk about; other than their forced proximity in the lab, they did everything they could to avoid each other's company. It didn't matter; thoughts still crept in like watercolors bleeding together, thoughts that Newt couldn't be sure were his own, memories he couldn't remember. Normally the symptoms of a Drift faded away quickly enough, but normally people didn't do three-way drifts with a Kaiju. They tried to hide it as best they could, but on some level everyone knew. Maybe not the specifics, but they could see the bubbles and steam of two people boiling over.

The worst of it wasn't the leg, or the strains of classic symphonies which sometimes drifted through his head. Sometimes there was this quiet, heavy sadness that settled into Newt's chest like fluid in his lungs, coming on without warning and leaving just as quickly. There was no rhyme or reason behind it, no cause and effect. Just a dull ache.

It was exactly the kind of feeling he had spent his life outrunning, riding on a wave of tattoos and words spilling out so quickly he barely had time to taste them, moving so quickly that if he broke apart at least the pieces would all be shooting off in the same direction. That was a way of holding together, after all. Like comets. Comets were just loosely-packed dirty space snowballs, bouncing around the universe ready to spin apart at any second. But they could go lightyears before they collapsed.

Sitting up, Newt banged his fist on the metal of the wall until it hurt. "Can you not do that right now?" He bellowed. The feeling broke off and retracted almost instantly, ragged edges sliding out of Newt's head like the frayed ends of a rope. He sighed and leans back again. They'd be back in a minute. The trick was to be asleep when that happened.

Used to be his head hitting the pillow knocked him out faster than a bag of bricks. Not anymore. He lay awake, staring up at a patch of rust on the ceiling while his mind wound through the old channels like water filling a maze. On the edge of his conciousness he could feel Hermann, knew he was lying down too with his eyes on the ceiling and his brain even further away, trying to outpace himself and each other. It was no use. The ache started up a few minutes later, and stayed with Newt until he fell asleep.

  


  


  


When he slept, he always dreamed.

In the past his brain had been too fried to do anything but rehash the day over and over, disjointed spurts of memory and nerves. Anxiety was killer even without the end of the world bearing down on you. Before K-day he'd dream all the time too, fast-paced and vaguely frightening ones about running away, through woods or alleyways or unidentifiable hallways. These days when he dreamt of running, it was through crowded streets or shipping yards. And now there was always something chasing him.

Some dreams weren't his. Instead of running, he was stuck in place, his feet sinking into the floor until it swallowed him up. In another one he was floating on the surface of an ocean with no waves, with nothing but that deep dark blackness beneath him--and maybe, a flicker of orange light. He liked his own dreams better. At least then he could run away. But Hermann's dreams weren't the worst of it.

Without fail, every night he'd go back to the blue dreams. He'd tried everything, from setting periodic alarms throughout the night to downing a handful of sleeping pills to smother them out. Nothing worked. Each time he'd wake up with the knowlege that his body wasn't right, it was too small, and the whispers in his head wouldn't go away, and when they did it was even worse because he was so goddamn alone. They were always different, yet always the same. So stupid how it made sense to him. He'd rise up, pressure and water sloughing off him until he burst free, full of something that wasn't anger but had the same effect; at the same time he was knitted into existance like a scarf, or sucked back down through miles and miles of ocean, voices singing out in beautiful, terrible voices, pulling him towards a place he never wanted to go and yet knew was home, had to come home, he was coming home--

Newt jolted awake, lying paralyzed while his heart tried to bolt out of his chest. It took him a while to remember how to move his limbs sometimes. In the room next door he could feel Hermann sitting up in bed, his legs swung over the edge. The gentle, unintelligible pulse of his conciousness was the mooring Newt clung to. He wasn't alone. Not entirely. But that was the problem, wasn't it?

  


  


  


A new shipment of specimens came in the next day. That was a really fancy way of saying that there was a single jar with a post-it note left on his desk when he stepped into the lab that morning. Hermann was already there, his back to the door, staring intently at his chalkboard and making the occasional correction. That chalkboard had been a pretty accurate representation of the Jaeger project's funding when they first arrived at Hong Kong, when you could find touchscreens in almost every highschool classroom. Newt had hated it at first. The scritch of chalk had ground on his nerves, the dry smell made him thirsty, and chalk dust coated anything within a ten foot radius of the board. That was then. He'd come to like it a lot more, recently. But whether those were his pangs of nostalgia or Hermanns, he couldn't be sure.

With a sigh, he set to cataloging the two-gallon jar on his desk. Apparently this one had been discovered washed up on a beach in San Elijo, and the fish had gotten to it first. He gave the liquid an experimental swirl, and part of the chunk inside detached. He set it back down.

It had been hard enough to discover the existance of the Kaiju hive mind when he still had a fresh Category 4 corpse lying in their backyard. Now he somehow had to figure out how it worked using scraps and leftovers. There was no new information to work with, and if they were lucky there never would be. New information meant a new Breach. Exactly the sort of thing he and Hermann were theoretically working to stop. But once he knew abou the hive mind, he would know how the Kaiju operated. If he managed to fix himself in the process of saving the world again, well that was a pleasant side effect.

Work that day, like most other days, was slow. The new scrap of flesh was virtually useless, as opposed to being completely useless like nearly everything else in his lab. He stared around balefully at all the empty space surrounding them, mentally filling in the slots with the beakers and chambers that used to be there. What hadn't gone bad, they'd mostly taken away. Relocating, they called it. Well, apparently he and Hermann had just been left behind.

There was a reason why the two of them were stuck in purgatory, why they'd been snipped out of the loop as neatly as a cut circuit. It all came back to the Drift .The link between them wasn't fading, it was getting stronger. But it hadn't just been the two of them Drifting, and the others knew that. There were times when Newton felt, just stirring on the edges of his conciousness, something that wasn't supposed to be there. And that scared the shit out of him. He hadn't told Hermann, but of course he didn't have to. God, Newt missed keeping secrets.

Finally Hermann looked up from his calculations on the board, and pretended to realize Newt had been staring at him for the past five minutes. His eyes narrowed.

“What are you staring at?” he demanded.

They never were good at ignoring each other for long. Newt shrugged and sat up a little straighter, a wry smile crawling onto his face. “I was trying to figure that out. Your handwriting sucks, dude.”

“Well, I do so apologize that the aesthetics of this room aren't just as you like them,” Hermann said snidely. “Perhaps you'd like to erase my invaluable notes and make a finger-painting with Kaiju entrails instead?”

“Oh, is that an offer?” Newt asked, hefting the jar. “Because I'm pretty sure Scunner here knows more about mathematics than whatever hack you're copying from your textbook.”

Hermann's nostrils flared, a sure sign that a nice, robust argument was about to ignite. A grin spread across Newt's face as Hermann proceeded to insult his education, his decorum, and of course his tattoos. It had all been said before.There was hardly a stone unturned between them that hadn't been ruthlessly mocked. For once it was sort of comforting. Not everything had to change.

Still, it was probably pretty fucked up that listening to Hermann speculate on his poor upbringing was the highlight of Newt's day.

  


  


  


These days Newt was spending all his time dreaming about the glory days. He should start investing in a rocking chair and corn-cob pipe, to regale the yougin's with tales. But still, the lunch hall was one of the things he missed the most. Back in the day, the cafeteria used to be a popular place.The food was terrible but everyone was hungry, and being not-hungry made everyone happy. These days the Shatterdome was mostly made up of construction workers either repairing old damage or tearing down the stuff they didn't need. The old crew was mostly dispersed, returned to their families or countries of origin, or shipped off to other Jaeger stations to work on rebuilding the program. So when Newt slides his tray across the table and settles down on the bench, he does it alone.

Except suddenly, there's Hermann. And that's not right, because they have a strict unspoken schedule about when they each eat, to avoid crossing paths, and Newt had always been careful to stick to it after that time he forgot he was allergic to peanuts (Hermann wasn't. Thanks for that one, buddy). Yet Hermann's hovering around the doorway and checking his watch like a guy waiting for his hot date, without doing Newt the courtesy of looking up when he has to know he's there. Really it's just rude. In fact, Newt was about to get up and say something when a figure appeared at Hermann's side, small and uniformed and painfully familiar. Mako Mori. A face he hadn't ever expected to see again, or to especially miss. She and Herman shook hands, then awkwardly hugged. Newt watched from the bench and tried not to feel whatever Hermann was feeling. The only thing he felt was a pang of guilt, and he wasn't sure who that belonged to. Hermann said something that made Mako turn to look in Newt's direction; after a moment, she lifts her hands to wave. Newt returns it. But she didn't come to sit down; instead she turns and nods to Hermann, and they exit the room leaving Newt alone and deeply confused.

Why would Mako be here? To visit _Hermann?_ She and Newt had never gotten along well; their differing opinion on the merits of Kaiju put a bit of a strain on their relationship, as it did with most of humanity Newt has experienced. But she was a world-famous celebrity and highly valuable personel, who last Newt had heard was working to restore the Anchorage station with the help of her drift partner. Apparently not. Apparently she was making courtesy calls on a certain Doctor Gottlieb, who for some reason merited her lofty attentions.

Newt stared into his mashed potatoes like he could find the answer there. What kind of breakthroughs had Hermann made while he sat there stirring a Kaiju power shake? Had Mako come to reassign him to Anchorage?

That thought snuffed out all his others like a wet towel thrown over a fire. It would make sense. When Newt's ego was as generously deflated as possible, he could admit that Hermann was just as smart as he was. And less damaged, after all. He hadn't stuffed his brain into a half-dead brain two times over, the first time with no partner to buffer it. Hermann still had usefulness. They'd cut him away from Newt now, along with the lab and his reputation. One by one the cables holding Newt up were being snipped away, until he could either fall into nothingness, or hang himself.

  


  


  


It always started the same. Like a red-hot poker being jammed behind his ear, and then nothingness. He'd learned to mistrust nothingness. It always meant there was something worse coming.

Damn, he just hated being right.

He was sinking deeper and deeper into something. Darkness rose around him and he fell through it. His eyes were fixed on a direction he knew was up, watching the last glimmer of light close over him. As soon as it was gone, it stopped existing. Then there was nothing except pressure and darkness, and a deep-seated cold that ate straight through him. He knew what was coming. He could feel it in every fiber, trembling with electricity, terror. The light bloomed beneath him this time, orange and red shot with blue, lashing out like tongues that speared into him, tugged him down further. The blue surrounded him.

Then, as inevitably as always, he drifted out into that other place. The memory of it burned in his skull, a fast aching hunger chewing into him, the chemical air seared his lungs and he breathed it deep. He was falling, still falling, settling into one of their machines like a grape caught in the gears, he couldn't move, couldn't get away, because part of him didn't want to and that part was strongest right now. The needles struck out at him, through him, sewing flesh into his, making his _real_ body, burying him alive under tons of muscles and skin that, all around him, came alive--

Awakeness was a slash across his temples, a hand reaching in and yanking him out. His own body collapsed around him. He couldn't move; breathing was an action that required all of his concentration. His brain was a series of electric-blue flashes, wisps of sleep threatening to drag him back down again. Without thinking his mind scattered, lunging out for anything to hold onto, latching onto the stablest thing he can find. There was a quiet gasp from behind him, and then everything went still.

  


  


When he came back to himself he couldn't move. He was too heavy, he'd been picked apart, his bones didn't fit in the right way. A hunger deeper than flesh yawned in his chest. And there was something jabbing him in the back.

Sounds came back to him first, but it took longer to understand them. Eventually he heard a own name, repeated over and over. A lot of associations with that name. Annoyance. Respect. Mostly annoyance. A modicum of begrudging affection. His eyes weren't open, but he was starting to think that was a good idea, if he could remember the sequence of muscles to do it. When he managed it, there was nothing in front of him except a rusted metal wall.

“Newt?” A voice. Hermann's voice, coming from behind him. Fear roiled in the pit of Hermann's stomach, and Newt felt it like it was his own. He pulled away from Hermann's mind as much as he dared right now. No need for him to feel how Newt was fighting every fiber of his body not to throw up right now. His tongue felt thick and nerveless, which was a new and terrifying sensation; normally he couldn't seem to stop talking but now he didn't know how to start.

“Where am I?” he managed eventually. After taking a few faltering, shuffling steps, he managed to turn around and lean intot he corner he had been staring into. Hermann was standing a few feet away, his cane still hovering a few inches off the ground; the jabbing culprit, no doubt. There was a look on his face that Newt didn't like. His brain was starting to work again.

“What the hell man? Why are you in my room?” he demanded.

“You're in my room,” Hermann said, fixing him with a blank stare.

Newt blinked. Sure enough, there was a pile of books on the desk nearby he didn't recognize, a bulletin board leaning on the wall and bristling with notes. The door was open. The lines of abuse he had lined up to chase Hermann out of his room evaporated. “Uh. Okay. How did I get in here?”

“I believe you were sleepwalking,” Hermann replied, a note of wariness in his voice. “The door was unlocked. You just...walked in.”

“Oh.” Newt craned his neck behind him. “And I was just... staring into that corner?”

Hermann does nothing but nod slowly. It's hard not to notice that he hasn't stepped any closer, or completely lowered his cane. As if Newt was dangerous. Well, maybe that wasn't too far from the truth.

Newt bobbed his head. “Right then. Alright. Cool. I'm just gonna. Yeah.” He gestured vaguely towards the door, avoiding Hermann's eyes, and shuffled his way out. Partly he suspects he might still be asleep. He's drifting downstream, spinning in the eddies of something he can't grasp or feel. Soon he'll be carried off.

“Newton.” It wasn't not often that Hermann could surprise him anymore, but his voice cut Newt short. When he turned around Hermann's face is dark. Newt couldn't feel anything over the cacaphony in his own head, but he knew that look well enough. Hermann was worried. Well, that was a valid response to his lab partner sleepwalking into his room and unconciously trying to climb into his head. Was he going to tell Newt that Mako was taking him away?

Hermann looked like he was about to continue whatever ominous thought had made him call out, but then looked away. After a minute he limped over to the side of his bed and sat down with a quiet _oof_ , piling both hands on the top of his cane as he stared up at Newt. His eyes were tired, and not just from the midnight awakening. Weary, that was the word.

“You're leaving,” Newt blurted out before Hermann could so much as open his mouth.

A frown creased the other man's brow. “Leaving? Going where?”

“Oh come on,” Newt snapped. “That's why Mako was here, right? Some other station is recruiting you. You're going to go running off after some other glamorous new job and ditch me here by myself.”

Hermann blinked. “I'm not leaving, you dolt.”

“Yeah, well you know what—” Newt paused. “Wait, really?” He fought down the swell of relief threatening to spill over to Hermann's side. Relief was pointless right now. The bomb had yet to drop.

Hermann sat back. “Mako offered me a job, working in the Anchorage station. Much of the rebuilding efforts have been relocated there, and, well. It would be appropriate.”

Newt stared at him. “You turned her down?” Hermann nodded. “Why would you do something like that?”

There was a long pause. Something in Hermann's face was making Newt very nervous.

“It's not going to get better,” Hermann said eventually. “This thing between us. I know you know that; you've seen the results as well as I have. Mako's reports from the Drift technologists in Anchorage confirm as much.”

There wasn't much Newt could say to that. But he'd never been one to let the silence draw out. “So you just want me to give up?” he demanded. “Throw in the towel, resign myself to a life of being slowly pulled apart from the inside?”

“Of course not!” Hermann snapped. “That's not what I'm saying.”

“Well spit it out dude, apparently I don't have too much time left for waiting!”

The anger on Hermann's face seemed to collapse in on itself. He seemed smaller, frailer, than he had just a minute ago. “You're not alone in this,” he said in a level voice. “You won't be—can't be, even. Whatever we do, it has to be together.” He shrugs his narrow shoulders helplessly. “You know it's not a choice anymore.”

The implications of that statement sunk into his brain like pebbles into the mud. Maybe he'd already known; maybe they both had for a while. Newt could still feel the resonance in his mind from when, just five minutes ago, he'd been spiralling away faster than ever before and his first reaction was to reach for the person on the other end of the line.Their brains were stuffed into each other, and getting closer by the day. There was nothing left to lever them apart. Bound up together like chinese fingercuffs. But then again, the only way you got out of those was by pushing closer together.

Newt shook his head. “No, man. There's always a choice. We had a choice after K-day, whether we were going to lie down and let the Kaiju stomp us, or try and do something about it. And you know what? We built a bunch of giant motherfucking robots. And we kicked their asses." Newt stepped forward and crouched in front of Hermann, forcing him to meet his eyes. He reached out and grabbed Hermann's hand, just like they did six months ago, except this time he saved Hermann the flailing. Their palms pressed close together, and Newt feels a relunctant stirring of hope shift in the pit of Hermann's stomach. Down, but not out. That was their speciality.

“You're right about one thing, we'll do it together,” Newt said. “It worked last time, it'll work again. The Dynamic Duo, part two. We'll both figure this out.”

Hermann's smile got a little less sad, and he squeezed Newt's hand. “We'll certainly try,” he said.

As he walked out of Hermann's room, Newt didn't have to think twice to know that Hermann didn't believe him. Between the two of them Newt had every reason to cling to false hope. But false hope was what got them this far. And some things just didn't change. 

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Newt is bugging Hermann with [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69SoC9470_I) in the first chapter because I'm corny and overly fond of symbolism ;) I definitely want to continue this when I get the chance!


End file.
